Ever since the first Republican debate of 2015, I could not
help but notice that of all the candidates, the only ones who sounded like
mature adults seemed to be John Kasich, Marco Rubio and probably Jeb Bush. Rubio, once a competent state legislator,
actually sounds mature beyond his years when he says what he appears to
actually believe. Unfortunately, these
occasions are rare, because he, like young Bobby Jindal, usually sounds like
one of his more moronic colleagues has told him what to say. Rubio, much like President Obama in 2008, is
probably eight to ten years away from being ready for the presidency. Unfortunately for Democrats, Mr. Kasich would
probably be ready now. Fortunately for
Democrats, vacuous Republican donors probably don't see in people like Kasich
and Jeb Bush the ideal thug they are wishing for. With their histories of actually mediating
between warring parties on rare occasions, they certainly do not represent the
ideological and intellectual paragon of the party's current idol, their last
president, Dick Cheney. No, intelligence
and grace are not advantages in this Republican primary contest.

Even more obvious to
me, but universally overlooked by the official Democratic Party of "Pretty
Stupid," is the problem of conservatives defending the federal government's
right to wiretap every single phone in the United States, keeping records of
pertinent or non pertinent private conversations as a way of preventing
terrorism. Meanwhile, these same
"patriots" oppose not only the federal government, but the state
governments' keeping records of people who own guns, even assault rifles. Last I heard, one and one still equals
two. You can't really have it both ways,
now can you? Needless to say, there are
ways around this. Personally I don't get
as upset as I used to about my phone being tapped, though I wish I could have
some degree of protection if the feds want to use information about me
illicitly. As for the Second Amendment,
it's pretty obvious that the states are required to have some sort of gun
regulation and that the feds should require special subpoenas to pry the
information out of the states. Alas
that's too logical and probably too close to a "strict" interpretation of the amendment
that both conservative and liberal politicians would have trouble recognizing.

Another more subtle
but important weakness of virtually all of the Republican candidates is not
their assertion that they are conservative and personally "pro life" or
personally against the idea of "gay marriage," but the association of these
issues with violations of the candidates' religious freedom. Most Democrats fail to see that most of these
men and women are the type of Christians who believe that their religion is the
only true religion. Thus, except
for a few of them, violating someone else's religion doesn't count as a
violation of religious freedom. Since
most religions permit abortion in the first trimester, for example, overturning
Roe v. Wade could well violate a multitude of other religions' freedom. Now, I'm not taking sides on the
abortion issue here, only pointing out that the argument of "freedom of
religion" is almost always a double-edged sword!

Fortunately for
Republicans, their party and their privately owned Supreme Court majority are
quite skilled at and fight almost exclusively with double-edged swords. Unfortunately, the Democratic party of "you
know what" does not seem to have any training in the use of the double-edged
blade nor do scores of law professors, apparently. When the bogus U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
donating to a candidate is protected by the First Amendment, no matter how
large the obvious bribe with its unavoidable associated quid quo pro might be, they inadvertently protected the voting
franchise, a similar expression of opinion that does not carry an unavoidable quid pro quo with it. Unfortunately, Democrats, especially
President Obama, instead of fighting back with their two-edged swords,
simply wet their pants when the demented Antonin Scalia called voting a
meaningless act of pushing a button, a statement, by the way, which even he
knows was not intended to be applied to the voting franchise.

Yeah, I really believe that Mr. Obama and his
uncle, "Tom Holder," should have threatened Florida's Governor Scott and his
vacuous Florida Attorney General Bondi with a free stay in the federal penitentiary if they continued to
illegally rob people of the right to vote as they did a few years ago. I think that might have thrown the issue back
into the Supreme Court rather quickly. Instead, "Uncle Tom" Holder wrote his
usual polite suggestion to stop the naughty behavior, which Scott and Bondi
politely ignored. Holder, the Democratic
Party of "Pretty Stupid" probably doesn't remember, is the federal Attorney General who permitted
Governor Jeb Bush and his political concubine, Katherine Harris, to forge
thousands of innocent, mostly African American voters' names onto the rolls of
felons, purposely depriving them of their votes in 2000. Holder, who had been receiving two million
dollars a year from the law firm defending George Bush in his recount scandal,
was afraid he would have to "give the money back" if he became involved in the
case. His official statement went
something like: "The real problem wasn't me, it's that felons should be allowed
to vote." Good answer, Mr. Holder, and
just what I would expect... from a felon like yourself. What's your excuse Mr. Obama?

Dr. Allen Finkelstein, writing since 2006 under the penname “O’finky,” was born in New York, where he attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County as a boy. He continued his religious training in South Florida until his family, (more...)